Impact of Rankings and Accreditations on the Brand of a University on the Free Market - A Discussion Article

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the issue of the quality of university within the Polish higher education system. The author, the founder and president of a strongly student-oriented university, believes that under Polish conditions (limited government outlays on research, no clear demand for innovations and research from industry in Poland), the quality of higher education will be most strongly determined by the quality of graduates which, I in turn, builds the public image of universities and the public trust in them. Universities or their departments which want to attract talented candidates in the ever intensifying competition will have to take care of their public image and prove their high quality. This will lead to an increased interest in the brand of the university and mechanisms applied to evaluate the quality of university. New forms of evaluation introduced into common practice in the second half of 1990s (accreditations, rankings) will increasingly influence the situation of the Polish higher education. The author discusses the impact of rankings and accreditations on the brands of universities and ponders about the strongest determinants of the quality of a university: brand (image), position in rankings or results of accreditation procedures.